Blockbuster actor Robert Downey Jr is no stranger to reinvention. With Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes (and their respective sequels), RDJ flexes his box-office muscle as Hollywood’s most reliable action hero. By Alison Prato.

Robert Downey Jr glides into the LA Traditional Wing Chun Kung Fu Academy, drumming his fingers on his stomach.

He’s here to work on choreography for some additional fight scenes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows (due out on DVD in Australia on May 10), so he’s dressed to work out, wearing baggy sweatpants, spotless grey Nikes and a beat-up Iron Man T-shirt — which must have given him a smile when he put it on this morning.

That’s not surprising, because if you learn anything about Downey, it’s that he never takes himself too seriously. Another thing you notice: he’s “on” all the time.

“I practically live here,” he exclaims, throwing around hugs and handshakes, lighting up the room with his every-guy charm. His second home (or technically third, since he has multimillion-dollar residences in both Venice and Malibu) is full of friends and trainers, including Eric Oram, a man Downey calls Sifu, the kung fu master who’s partly responsible for keeping the 46-year-old actor in kick-arse shape. He bounces past a framed photo of himself in Iron Man gear (it’s signed, “Sifu, look what we made. Rob.”). He cases the joint for a comfortable spot to chat before suggesting the interview take place in his car outside.

After nearly 40 years in the business and a hugely public career that’s included as many lows (drug busts, rehabs, jail) as it has highs (Oscar nominations for Chaplin and Tropic Thunder, a happy marriage to producer Susan Levin, aka the Missus), the poster boy for Hollywood excess has done the impossible: reinvented himself as a bona fide action hero, a man who has starred in not one but two insanely lucrative — and beloved — franchises.

As recovering alcoholic Tony Stark, he gave heart to a comic superhero. As Sherlock Holmes, he has become such a hard-bodied badass fans  have dubbed him “Shirtless Holmes”. (The Punch Bowl scene, in which Downey rips guys twice his size to shreds, was shot in super-slow-motion with a Phantom HD camera at 1000-plus frames per second; the movie is worth it for that scene alone.) Next spring, he’ll appear as Tony Stark again in The Avengers, and in 2013 he’ll star in Iron Man 3.

“I guess I had some notion about [being an action hero],” he says. “I wanted to be able to look good and defend myself and all that stuff . I’ve always really enjoyed that genre, but I mean, it’s pretty outlandish. I’m not particularly tall or strong or fast or aggressive. Yet, I’m not faking it. To me, it’s a cosmic chuckle.”

When asked what he thinks about turning the iconic literary character into a Shirtless Holmes, Downey takes a bite of quinoa and ponders. “I think I was really skinny that day, and I’ll probably never look like that again, so it’s just shameful,” he quips. “But also, that was a moment in time. It was a point in the shooting where I was just training a lot, and I knew this particular sequence well. I felt as confident as I’ll ever feel, I guess.”

His training for Avengers meant working out at least 12 hours a week, including strength training, martial arts with Oram, Tracy Anderson Method workouts (“The Missus has an instructor, so I piggyback on that”) and yoga with instructor Vinnie Marino of Yoga Works. “It was ideal,” Downey says, “but it’s completely unsustainable. I’m not a kid, and I’m not a professional athlete, so what I’m probably doing is feeling good all the time and overtraining wildly.”

During Sherlock, he weighed around 70kg, with just six percent body fat. He takes a sip of bottled water. “Yeah, I remember it fondly,” he continues. “But to be honest, I was also smoking and pounding coffee, so I was probably dehydrated. Which is fun for a minute.” He has since quit smoking and now pops Nicorette gum, conveniently located in the armrest of his car.

“There’s never a time when I’m not gunning for something in the future, so, at least until these two franchises burn out, I’ll be seeking to put on size without sacrificing too much flexibility, or seeking to lose as much weight and muscle as I can without looking emaciated.” His highest weight, he estimates, is about 79kg.

“I’ve seen him training,” says Sherlock producer Silver. “He is in awesome, awesome shape. No matter what he’s doing, he’s always excellent — whether it’s making a speech at an awards show or doing a role or just ordering dinner. He knew that scene [in Sherlock] with his shirt off was coming, and the day I showed him a still [from that shoot], he said, ‘How can we put that on the side of a building?’ He wanted the world to see him look like that.”

And they did. Sherlock Holmes, also starring Jude Law, went on to make more than US$500 million worldwide. In Sherlock 2, however, Downey says, laughing, “I’m, like, dressing in drag. Holmes isn’t particularly in shape.”  BODY DOUBLE – To play Iron-pumping superhero Tony Stark, Downey Jr. packed on 10kg of muscle.  For his scenes as “Shirtless Holmes”, however, Downey leaned down to 70kg.

Sifu walks by, and the actor and his master give each other the official greeting: left fist inside the right palm. “Thus signifying that from the feminine, or yin, comes the actual strength,” explains Downey, who joined the Wing Chun Academy in 2003. “I’ve always wanted to find a discipline that I could really dedicate myself to. I thought the whole apprenticeship part of it would be nice, you know?” He also liked that it was mobile, so he could do stuff on his own on film sets and was always working his way up with no real endgame in sight. “I’m testing for the brown sash next,” he says. “I’ve been doing it for eight years and I am just now approaching the halfway mark, grading-wise. Which is great. So that is an apprenticeship. Doing something for a year or two and being a black belt, to me, is something else. I also respect it and am sure you have to work for it, but an apprenticeship takes a very long time. I guess in another eight to 10 years, I might know what I’m doing.”

As co-star in Sherlock 2, Noomi Rapace has seen Downey’s intensity first-hand. “He has an energy that is very unusual,” she says. “He’s in amazing shape — I was so impressed by him. He’s so incredible, intelligent and sharp. I’ve never worked with anybody who works so fast. We did kung fu together at his house and it was fantastic. He gives 150 percent. He never stops. His eyes were on fire. I was like, ‘Oh, my god’. If his trainer said, ‘Faster’ he did it five times faster. If I could, I would do kung fu with him every morning.”

“Rob has spoiled me for any other private person to work with,” says yogi Vinnie Marino, who plays Patti Smith, Radiohead and one of Downey’s favourites, Steely Dan, during their workouts. “He’s a great student because of his clarity, his determination and his brains. He has such good body awareness. We go beyond Vinyasa flow. He has these wall ropes at his house that he can hang on, or we’ll do restorative poses with a chair. He gets an eclectic mix of yoga with me.”

His team is very supportive of him, but a story about Downey wouldn’t be complete without talking about his wife. He and Levin, whom he met during the making of Gothika, have become a formidable Hollywood power couple. During his Best Actor Golden Globes acceptance speech for Sherlock Holmes, Downey said, “If it weren’t for her, I would be working tables at the Daily Grill.”

“Well that’s how I felt right at that moment,” he says with another smirk. “What can I even say about her? I’m crazy about her. Everybody’s opinion isn’t right all the time, but as far as averages go, if she wants to, she could hit to the same seat in the bleachers over and over and over. That sort of consistency is awe-inspiring. We give each other the freedom to explore who and what we really are, which is great, because we’re always changing. I know I’ve changed a fair amount over the last decade, but she’s changed 10 times more than I have.”

When asked if he wants more kids — Downey’s son, Indio, with former wife Deborah Falconer, is 18 — he fiddles with a pink and blue bracelet. He’s getting uncomfortable. Then he smiles. “I can’t tell you why, but this is a very important little wax bracelet.” (Just days after our back-seat chat, Downey announces he and Levin are expecting their first child together, which explains quite a bit.)

Sifu comes by the car again, gesturing that it’s time for the workout. With a newborn on the way, one thing’s for certain: even if he’s been up all night with a screaming baby, Downey doesn’t plan on letting his fitness down. “Discipline is doing what you say you’re gonna do and not doing what you say you’re not gonna do,” he says. “That’s life.

To me, that’s honour. I don’t want to be a person who doesn’t have any honour. You set your alarm and you make an appointment, and you’re letting that person down if you don’t show up. I put myself in a situation where it would be shameful not to show up.”

Kung Fu Fighting

RDJ incorporates Wing Chun into his everyday life — including his films.

“Robert’s focus is night and day from when we first began,” says LA Wing Chun Academy founder Eric Oram, who has been training Robert Downey Jr. since 2003. “This shotgun mind of his channelled it into a single point of focus and turned it into a laser,” he adds, regarding the concept-based Chinese martial art and form of self-defence that utilises both striking and grappling while specialising in close-range combat. “The training demands it. During an exchange, if your brain is anywhere else, I’m gonna get ya. If the mind strays, gotcha. Stop to pat yourself on the back? Thinking about your taxes? Gotcha.”

Made famous by Bruce Lee, Wing Chun is having a moment, thanks to the amazing fight choreography in Sherlock and Iron Man. “Film fight choreography has its own demands,” Oram says. “It’s focus, control, timing, and lots of repetition. It’s remembering where you are every step of the way in telling a story and yet playing it as if it’s happening for the first time live. There’s an art to that, and Robert works very, very hard in that process. I’ve fight-doubled him for minor stuff, like pick-up shots, but Robert does all his own stuff when it comes to fights. When the camera’s on him, it’s really him doing it.”

Iron Script

How RDJ bulked up for his role in Iron Man.

Robert Downey Jr. hadn’t played an action hero before 2008’s Iron Man, and while he wasn’t out of shape, he didn’t have the heroic build needed to portray Tony Stark. “He was skinny,” says Brad Bose, Downey’s trainer. “He weighed about 68kg, but he was big into Wing Chun, which kept him in shape.”

To prepare Downey for his role, Bose prescribed a periodisation program, alternating periods of heavy weight/low reps with lighter weight/high reps. Downey trained four days a week, sessions lasting from 40 to 90 minutes, with the length varied to keep the actor on his toes. “He couldn’t say, ‘OK, I know I can conserve a little energy because we’re two exercises from the end’, ” Bose says. “He never knew what was coming, so he had to work hard all the time.”

Bose also placed the prospective Iron Man on a strict, clean, calorie-dense diet. “He ate every three hours,” he says. “We kept him on a 30/30/40 split: 30 percent protein, 30 percent fat and 40 percent carbs. He was taking in more than 5000 calories a day for nine months. If you don’t eat that much, your body won’t accept the weight.”

Stylistically, Bose wanted to build Downey into a character who looked capable of going toe-to-toe with fighter jets and terrorists. “Our goal was to get him as big as we could, but to make sure he had some kind of six-pack,” Bose says. “We really focused on the old-school heavy lifting: military presses, dips and bench presses. Keep him ripped, but maintain the muscle mass.” The muscle Downey built wasn’t just for show, either. By the end of his training, and 10kg of lean muscle later, he’d doubled his bench press max and nearly tripled his shoulder press.

So what did he do after reaching this peak? He promptly dropped the mass and went back to 70kg to film Sherlock Holmes.

— Sam Dehority